Yet an absolute and positive result cannot be reached. We meet
with contrasts hard to explain. While architects, painters, and
sculptors were working with restless activity in and for the churches,
we hear at the beginning of the sixteenth century the bitterest
complaints of the neglect of public worship and of these churches
themselves.
It is well known how Luther was scandalized by the irreverence with
which the priests in Rome said Mass. And at the same time the feasts of
the Church were celebrated with a taste and magnificence of which
Northern countries had no conception. It looks as if this most
imaginative of nations was easily tempted to neglect everyday things,
and as easily captivated by anything extraordinary.
It is to this excess of imagination that we must attribute the epidemic
of religious revivals upon which we shall again say a few words. They
must be clearly distinguished from the excitement called forth by the
great preachers. They were rather due to general public calamities, or
to the dread of such.
In the Middle Ages all Europe was from time to time flooded by these
great tides, which carried away whole peoples in their waves. The
Crusades and the Flagellant revival are instances. Italy took part in
both of these movements. The first great companies of flagellants
appeared, immediately after the fall of Ezzelino and his house, in the
neighbourhood of the same Perugia which has been already spoken of as
the headquarters of the revivalist preachers.
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